continuity and discontinuity in nineteenth- and twentieth ... · pdf filenineteenth- and...

Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire XLV, winter/hiver 2010,

.pp. 565-588. ISSN 0008^107 © Canadian Journat of History

Essay review:

Continuity and Discontinuity in Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century German History

by Lars Fischer

Contesting the German Empire, 1871-1918, by Matthew Jefferies. Oxford,Blackwell Publishers, 2008. vi, 242 pp. $84.95 US (cloth), $34.95 US (paper).

Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, edited by Sven Oliver Müller andComelius Torp. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009. 461 pp. €59.90(cloth).

Imperial Germany 1871-1918, edited by James Retallack. New York, OxfordUniversity Press, 2008. xv, 328 pp. $120.00 Cdn (cloth), $40.95Cdn (paper).

The Continuities of German History. Nation, Religion, and Race across the LongNineteenth Century, by Helmut Walser Smith. New York, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2008. 246 pp. $75.00 US (cloth), $22.99 US (paper).

Weimar Germany. Promise and Tragedy, by Eric D. Weitz. Princeton, NewJersey, Princeton University Press, 2007. xi, 425 pp. $29.95 US (cloth), $20.95US (paper).

Reviewing these volumes in conjunction has not been easy' since they are sodiverse in type and purpose. The volume edited by James Retallack forms part ofthe Short Oxford History of Germany series, designed to provide a "concise,readable, and authoritative point of entry" to its topic — in this case ImperialGermany. Although all of its contributors maintain a level of historiographicalrefiectiveness that distinguishes this volume from the bulk of conventional text-books, it is clearly pitched at a student audience, as is Matthew Jefferies's histo-riographical survey. The collection edited by Sven Oliver Müller and ComeliusTorp springs from a conference held in Berlin in 2007 in honour of Hans-UlrichWehler on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. It shares the strong histori-ographical interest of the previous two volumes yet differs from them in that it isclearly directed at a scholarly audience. Eric Weitz's volume, by contrast, seemsdesigned mainly for students and general readers. It is the least historiographical-ly inflected of the books under review and obviously differs from the previous

566 ESSAY REVIEW: LARS FISCHER

three in that it foeuses not on Imperial Germany but on the Weimar period.Helmut Walser Smith's call to (re-)integrate "the nineteenth century into the his-tory of the twentieth, and the longer life of the past into the shorter moment ofcataclysm" is clearly directed at his peers and flies squarely in the face of the cur-rently widespread.notion that the story of the short twentieth century and itscatastrophes and cataclysms is ultimately best told as one of radical discontinu-ities. • Even a slightly longer review pieee like this cannot but be mthlessly selec-tive in its diseussion of five volumes of this scope and ambition.

I

Jefferies clearly has a point when he suggests that "diversity has become the neworthodoxy" in the treatment of Imperial Germany.2 On his aecount, "all recenthistorians have sought to provide a balaneed picture of this fascinating era, inwhich one can find examples of light and shadow in remarkably equal meas-ure."3 Retallack places similar emphasis on the notion that "both stories — thetriumph of modemity and the long shadow cast by authoritarianism — are tme.But when kept separate," he adds, "their plot lines are too neatly drawn to depietan era when boundaries were fluid, beliefs were in flux, and eonflict was the onlyconstant.'"*

Yet for all the diversity and aspirations to even-handedness characteristie ofmuch of the recent historiography, the volumes under review demonstrate thatwell-established themes relating to the eomplex and thomy issue of continuityand discontinuity in modem German history are still a major preoecupation formost historians working in the field. And how could it be any other way? Withinless than thirty years of the demise of Imperial Germany, the Nazi regime hadbeen and gone, and had committed unprecedented crimes in interaction with aGerman population of which a substantial proportion had to varying degreesbeen shaped by Imperial Germany.

The desire, formulated programmatically by Richard Evans in 1978, "torehabilitate Wilhelmine society as an objeet of study in its own right, and not totreat it merely as a prelude to the Nazi era," is perfeetly reasonable and potential-ly problematic roughly in equal measure. The cmcial term in Evans's formula-tion is, of course, "merely."^ Who would seriously suggest that one ought tostudy Imperial Germany only "as a prelude to the Nazi era"? Yet for better or forworse. Imperial Germany does also form part of the prehistory of Nazi Germany,and what is actually at stake here is the degree to which one assumes or aeknowl-edges that this nexus ought to inform historians' approaches.

' Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History (New York and Cambridge, 2008),p. 38.

2 Matthew Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, 1871-1918 (Oxford, 2008), p. 202.3 Ibid., p. 46.'' James Retallack, "Looking forward," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, p. 271.5 Cited in Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 33.

NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMAN HISTORY 567

This may ultimately be more of a normative or ethical issue than a method-ological one in the narrower sense. The claim formulated most sharply in theform of Adomo's statement that Auschwitz has foisted a new categorical imper-ative upon humanity has the potential to create a sharp divide between those whofeel in some form seriously committed to it and those who are rather less inclinedto acknowledge it — all the more so if scholars give the impression, perhapsinadvertently, that they consider it an imposition. At a fundamental level, thisdivide potentially cuts across all walks of life and all disciplines and specialisms,yet there are obvious pragmatic reasons why it would be more acutely felt in thehistoriography of Imperial Germany than that of, say, medieval monasticism orRenaissance Florence.

This underlying division has done much to confuse and over-determine thelong-standing debate regarding the Sonderweg concept, the once widely accept-ed notion that Germany's modemization process from the late eighteenth centu-ry onwards followed a peculiar path that helps explain German society's suscep-tibility to National Socialism. On one level, this debate has obviously concemedthe specific issue of whether the existence of this peculiar path really can beproven or not. Yet another, rather more fundamental question resonates through-out this debate, namely that of whether the doubtless peculiar outcome, namelyNational Socialism, does or does not require a special commitment on the part ofthose studying the pre-history of that peculiar outcome. As Jürgen Kocka put itin 1988, "one should reserve the Sonderweg concept (although not necessarilythe misleading word) for the (comparative) discussion of one basic and startlingfact, namely, that Germany tumed into a fascist and totalitarian state while thosecountries in the west with which Germany likes to compare itself and with whichit should compare itself, did not — despite the fact that they were confrontedwith similar challenges and conditions.''^ In this sense, Kocka suggested, theSonderweg concept remained "a meaningful, though not necessarily accurate,contribution to historical understanding."'' As Jefferies has rather aptly put it, "itwas for political and pedagogic rather than scholarly reasons" that Kocka andmany others initially continued to defend the Sonderweg concept, albeit inincreasingly modified guises.^

As Kocka's formulation already indicates, there is an added twist to this ele-ment of conftjsion and over-determination. For "the Sonderweg debate was," asHelmut Walser Smith has observed, "ultimately concemed with 1933 and notwith 1941, with politics and not with mass murder."^ Yet over the last twodecades or so, 1941 has increasingly displaced 1933 as the decisive point of ref-

* Jürgen Kocka, "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German 'Sonderweg',"Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988), pp. 12-13.

'Ibid., p. 3.^ Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 44.' Helmut Walser Smith, "Jenseits der Sonderweg-Debatte," in Sven Oliver Müller and

Comelius Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse (Göttingen, 2009), p. 37.

568 ESSAY REVIEW; LARS FISCHER

erence for the scholarly engagement with National Socialism.'^ The seeminglystraightforward divide between proponents and critics ofthe Sonderweg concepttherefore potentially masks another more eomplex divide.

To the extent that the Sonderweg concept still has proponents we arguablyneed to distinguish between "old" and "new" supporters. On the one hand, thereare the few remaining stalwarts of the concept in its classic guise, foremostamong them Wehler himself, althou.gh even he has substantially modified hisposition." On the other hand, there are those who for "political and pedagogicrather than scholarly reasons" are far fi-om entirely eonvinced by the concept onits own terms but nevertheless feel profoundly uneasy about the wider implica-tions of its wholesale rejeetion. The cmcial point here is that the latter tend to befirmly oriented towards 1941, while both the concept's proponents and critics inthe original Sonderweg debate were firmly wedded to 1933 as the crucial pointof reference. The Sonderweg debate, in other words, has been underpinned bothby divergent views regarding the extent to which nineteenth- and early twenti-eth-century German history neeessarily needs to be conceptualized as alwaysbeing also the prehistory of National Socialism and by divergent views as towhat exactly the primary point of reference for possible continuities should be.

How, then, do the three volumes under review that focus direcfly on ImperialGermany assess the current status of the Sonderweg concept? For Jefferies, itwould seem to be to all intents and purposes beyond redemption. To be sure, hedoes at one juncture caution that "one should be wary of pronouncing theSonderweg dead and buried — it is unlikely to ever fully disappear."'^ Yet else-where his formulations are rather less reticent, and he refers to "the demise oftheonce-mighty Sonderweg paradigm" that was "finally fading from view in the1990s."'3 Torp and Müller suggest that it in fact continues to exert a consider-able indirect influence simply because their rejection of it continues to render theconcept's opponents heavily dependent on its logic.''* This is undoubtedly tme,but, in and of itself, could quite easily be taken as evidence for the persistence ofthe concept's harmfulness. Rather more convincingly, Retallack insists that "it isimportant to note that both the proponents of the Sonderweg and its critics agreethat continuities and national comparisons are valid: they disagree mainly aboutwhich continuities and which comparisons are important. Thus discussion of theSonderweg is not inadmissible; only the demand that it be accepted or rejectedas an all-or-nothing proposition should be resisted."'^ Indeed, in the Wehler

'" Walser Smith, Continuities, p. 16." Cf Hans-Ulrich Wehler, "The German 'Double Revolution' and the 'Sonderweg', 1848-79,"

in Reinhard Rürup (ed.). The Problem of Revolution in Germany, 1789-1989 (Oxford, New York,2000), pp. 55-65.

'2 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 44.'3 Ibid., pp. 104, 18.''' Sven Oliver Müller and Comelius Torp, "Das Bild des Deutschen Kaiserreichs im Wandel,"

in Müller and Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 14.'5 James Retallack, "Introduction," in Retallack (ed.), ¡mperial Germany, p. 6.


Festschrift, if I understand it correctly, Retallack expresses his exasperation atthe degree to which ostensible criticism of the Sonderweg concept has itselfbecome something of a red herring. "How many more times," he asks, "will webe required to take a buming torch to the straw man argument of a sclerotic,backward Empire govemed by pre-modem elites?"'^

Walser Smith has in any case made the important observation that there is acmcial distinction between proving that certain problems were not unique toImperial Germany and demonstrating that they did not exist in Germany and/orwere not problematic. •'' For obvious reasons, the former has been the main pre-occupation of the critics of the Sondenveg concept, arguably to the neglect of thelatter. As Shulamit Volkov points out in her rather energetic and at times almostintemperate contribution to the Wehler Festschrift, the Sondenveg concept wasalways designed to elucidate possible fundamental continuities between Imperialand Nazi Germany. Yet historians' perceptions of both regimes have changedradically. Put simply, the relationship of both regimes to modemity is now con-sidered by many to be much more complex and ambiguous than was generallyassumed a quarter of a century ago.^^ In other words, demonstrating thatImperial Germany was not as "backward" as initial formulations of theSondenveg concept suggested, far from calling into question continuitiesbetween Imperial and Nazi Germany, only underscores them if Nazi Germany isno longer perceived as "backward" either. In this sense the issue of ImperialGermany's "modemity" is now perhaps increasingly tuming into a red herring aswell.

Jefferies's account of the assault on the Sondenveg concept signalled by thepublication of Richard Evans's collection. Society and Politics in WilhelmineGermany, in 1978 and David Blackboum and Geoff Eley's Mythen deutscherGeschichtsschreibung in 1980 is lively and engaging but also raises some impor-tant questions.l^" According to Jefferies, the interventions by Evans andBlackboum and Eley were pathbreaking events in more respect than one. "Untilthese two volumes," he explains, "the notoriously insular guild [of German his-torians] had generally ignored British studies of German history, unless theycould be instmmentalized for propaganda purposes.... Such complacency wouldchange, however," with the publication of these two volumes.^o Yet whence hiscertainty that this case was so different? Jefferies himself suggests that "one rea-son for the ... initial hostility" that characterized the response of proponents ofthe Sondenveg to this critique "was no doubt the suspicion" that the new-found

'* James Retallack, "Obrigkeitsstaat und politischer Massenmarkt," in Müller and Torp (eds.).Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 130.

" Walser Smith, "Jenseits der Sondenveg-Debatte," p. 49.'* Shulamit Volkov, "Nochmals zum Antimodemismus im Kaiserreich," in Müller and Torp

(eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 68." The latter was an earlier version of their better-known volume. The Peculiarities of German

History (1984).20 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 32.


"emphasis on the pluralism and modemity of Wilhelmine Germany ... had apol-ogist undertones."2' He goes on to point out that the critique of the Sonderwegdid in fact find "a positive reception from some of German history's most con-servative figures, ever eager to 'normalize' their country's past."22 Blackboumand Eley, he suggests, were "no doubt embarrassed by this unwelcome sup-port."2^ The concept's subsequent decline, he adds, "was in part a consequenceof the 'normalization' of German affairs brought about by reunification."^^ Yetnone of this, it would seem, merits serious concem, presumably because this wasnot what the critics intended and because, as Jefferies sees it, "the 1990s pro-duced no significant study of the Empire which genuinely merits the label 'apol-ogist'."^5 Even if we accept this diagnosis, the fact that things did not tum out asbadly as expected would not, in and of itself, automatically invalidate the initialfears. But there is a rather more important issue at stake here.

As Jefferies points out, Blackbotim and Eley's central point was that thevery real continuities between Imperial Germany and the Nazi period "should belocated not in the discrepancy between economic modemity and socio-politicalbackwardness" that the proponents of the Sonderweg concept claimed to haveidentified in Imperial Germany, "but in the pathology of bourgeois modemityitself."26 While there is a lot to be said for this line of argument, surely nobodywould claim that this assumption is the genuine core of the systematic routing ofthe Sonderweg concept that has ensued since Blackboum and Eley's interven-tion. To put it bluntly, of the academics and students who have routinely beenteaching and leaming over the last two decades or so, and continue to teach andleam, that the Sonderweg concept was really rather silly, surely only a minorityseriously share the conviction that botirgeois modemity is itiherently pathologi-cal. On a similar note, Jefferies points out that, "although it is commonlyassumed that parliamentarization and democratization march side-by-side, this israrely the case."2"' Again my quibble is not with the argument itself, but I verymuch doubt that this insight consistently underpins the assumptions aboutdemocratization in Imperial Germany that have become fashionable in recentyears.

The model of liberal modemization from which the German Sonderweg hadsupposedly deviated may have been a myth; in this respect the concept's criticswere entirely right. Yet among those who now have leamed to reject the

21 Ibid., p . 36.22 Ibid., p . 35. C f also Jürgen Kocka's comment in 1988 that Blackboum and Eley's interven-

tion was "well received by those more conservative German journalists and scholars who prefer amore positive view of German national history" (Kocka, "German History before Hitler," p . 7).

23 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p . 35.2'! Ibid., p. 45.25 Ibid., p. 46.2* Ibid., p. 36. For a very interesting discussion of this issue cf. also Edward Ross Dickinson,

"The bourgeoisie and reform," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, pp. 166-69.2' Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 106.


Sondenveg eoncept more or less out of hand, the proportion of those who in faeteontinue to believe in this myth without much hesitation is surely eonsiderable.The contention that Germany deviated no more from the mythical model of lib-eral modemization than the countries that supposedly epitomized it has thus, inlarge part, been translated into the assurance that Germany eame just about asclose to realizing that model as everybody else. Effectively stripped of its criti-cal core, the eritique of the Sondenveg concept has thus, in terms of its widerimpact, become apologetie after all, its authors' intentions notwithstanding.Perhaps they were genuinely oblivious to this possible outeome, although it washardly unforeseeable; perhaps they took a ealculated risk. Either way, while thereis little point in crying over spilt milk, and while one needs to be very earefulabout the degree to which one ean hold historians responsible for the long-termimpact of their eonceptual interventions, there is surely nothing to be gainedfi-om adding new myths to old by maintaining the pretenee that the Sondenvegconcept has fallen prey to a universal consensus that bourgeois modemity isinherently pathologieal.

Retallack argues that the contributions in his edited volume "cast a distinc-tive, overarehing argument that Germany eould have been authoritarian andmodem at the same time."28 He himself refers to "middle-class Germans asreluctant modemizers" and rather aptly characterizes Imperial Germany's politi-cal system as "a dynamie, flexible, even consensual form of authoritarianism ...that differs substantially from the fascist and totalitarian models with which it isso often confused."29 This is, of eourse, an extremely important point. Just asvarious forms of heinous mass murder have a tendency to pale in the shadow ofAuschwitz, Imperial German authoritarianism looks positively cozy when com-pared to the Nazi regime. To get a sense of this, one need only think of the con-fusion- in students' eyes when one tries to explain to them that Social Democratswere allowed to participate in elections while the party was banned underBismarck. To insist on lines of eontinuity between Imperial and Nazi Germanydoes not imply that the two were fundamentally the same but that without theformative influences of Imperial German political culture National Socialismwould have seemed an altogether less plausible option in the 1930s.

Retallack's own interpretation notwithstanding, his eontributors clearly forma broad ehureh, and his emphasis on Imperial Germany's authoritarianism seemsa far cry from, say, Mark Hewitson's Wilhelmine Germany, in which "social pol-icy was underpirmed by the protection of civil liberties" and the "obstaeles todemoeratization" that remained feature more as an afterthought than a key fea-ture.̂ O Ultimately, as in so many other cases, when it eomes to the assessment ofthe politieal system and political culture of Imperial Germany, a great dealdepends on where one places the goalposts. For his discussion of these issues.

28 Retallack, "Looking forward," p. 273.2' Retallack, "Intt-oduction," pp. 14, 15.

30 Mark Hewitson, "Wilhelmine Germany," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, pp. 48, 49.


Jefferies appropriates the catchy title of Brett Fairbaim's monograph. Democracyin the Undemocratic State (1997). Much recent research has been predicated onthe assumption that one will come to radically different results depending onwhether one looks at the political system or at political processes in ImperialGermany, While the former may have been far from democratic, the latter werecharacterized by a clear trend towards democratization, so the argument goes.

Jefferies quotes Fairbaim's contention that the "suffrage Bismarck createdwith unliberal intentions became within a generation the most potent vehicle ofpolitical participation in Germany. The Reichstag suffrage was the single mostimportant precondition, or engine, for the growth of participation before the tumof the century."3' It is no coincidence, of course, that Fairbaim refers twice inshort succession to participation rather than democracy or democratization.Dickinson similarly claims that "bourgeois reform... was potentially democratiz-ing (or at least participatory), in its form if not always in its values."^^

Yet participation, surely, is an ambivalent phenomenon, and as integral topopulism and at least some forms of dictatorship as it is to any model of democ-racy. As Retallack has pointed out elsewhere, "living in democratic and multicul-tural societies today, we find it easy to applaud the self-mobilization and self-emancipation of the masses. But telling this story with too much fervotir skewsour conclusions to the point that any self-mobilized social group can be seen ascontributing to the pluralization of political culture."^^ Instead, Retallack sug-gests, we need to understand various forms of participation as "falling some-where on the spectmm between participation-as-emancipation and participation-as-regimentation."^'* It is only against this backdrop that it makes sense to sug-gest, as Kühne does, that "it was democratization itself, based on and accelerat-ed by introduction of the universal suffrage, that blocked Germany's transition toa parliamentary form of govemment"; that Kühne initially refers to "broad-gauged democratization" suggests that he himself is aware of the problemsinvolved in invoking the concept of democratization in this context.^^

Nor is this the only complication. Dickinson, notwithstanding all his enthu-siasm for the reform-mindedness of parts of the German bourgeoisie, is in nodoubt that "for many bourgeois Germans, reform activity in private associationsseems to have been an altemative form of political engagement — a means ofshaping and goveming their society independent of the formal politicalprocess."^^ In other words, "bourgeois Germans ... were highly motivated toattempt to use non-political means to exercise what they saw as their natural rightand obligation to play a leading role in shaping their society, and particularly in

' ' Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p . 99 (emphasis added).32 Dickinson, "The bourgeoisie and reform," p. 172 (emphasis added).33 James Retallack, The German Right, 1860-1920 (Toronto, 2006), p . 13.3" Ibid., p . 22.35 Thomas Kühne, "Political culture and democratization," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial

Germany, pp. 176, 193.3* Dickinson, "The bourgeoisie and reform," p. 136.


shaping their soeiety's response to the challenges and opportunities of modemi-ty. "37 This may well make their activities modem, although one might questioneven that, but does it make them democratic or part of a larger democratizationprocess if by that one means more than mere partieipation? There is an addedtwist here: as is well-known, bourgeois reform-mindedness found its principalarena in the eities, where "the heart" of "bourgeois political power ih theempire," such as it was, was formed. Why? For the simple reason that "the suf-frage for German municipal elections was in general severely restricted (usuallyto less than 10 percent ofthe population)."^^

Ultimately, all this talk of increasingly widespread and diverse participa-tion/democratization hinges overwhelmingly on an appreciation of form overeontent. Take Diekinson's argument as a ease in point. "Whether their agendaswere modemist or anti-modemist," he explains, "almost all bourgeois reformmovements adopted a particular modem institutional stmcture, and a modemstrategy of agitation aimed at influencing public opinion." Dickinson then arguesthat, "whether they liked democracy or not, most German reformers assumedthat they had to operate in a political context — or at least a civil society — thatwas at bottom demoeratic in stmcture. "^^

How "liberal" Imperial Germany was or how strong a foree liberalism wasin Imperial Germany is similarly a question that will generate differing answersdepending on one's criteria. Jefferies suggests that "nowhere was the liberal con-tribution to unification more apparent than in the raft of legislation enacted in theNorth German Confederation between 1867 and 1870," and then immediatelyproceeds to cite Eley's contention that "Germany was re-made ... along the linesGerman liberals had broadly envisaged.''^^ Liberalism, the suggestion wouldseem to be, is not a speeific political programme but simply what liberals do.This is by no means an unreasonable suggestion; rather than measure the aetionsof liberals against an abstraet normative concept of liberalism, one operates onthe assumption that whatever liberals do or try to do is liberalism. One is remind-ed of Gershom Seholem's bold statement that Judaism is its history or, to useAmos Funkenstein's paraphrase, "everything Jews were occupied with at anygiven period.'"" Yet for Jefferies at least, the liberals' own pereeptions and aspi-rations apparently only qualify as an authentic representation of liberalism whenthey eoncur with his own interpretation. For elsewhere he cautions his readersthat "just beeause Germany's liberals saw the move away from free trade and theending ofthe Kulturkampf as a triumph of reaction, does not mean we shouldmake their viewpoint our own.'"'^

3 ' Ibid., p. 154 (emphasis added).38 Ibid., p . 164.39 Ibid., p . 170.^ Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p . 57.'•I Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher 7 9 / 5 - / 9 / 7 (Frankfurt/Main; Jüdischer Verlag, 1995), p. 409;

Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford; University ofCalifomia Press, 1993), p. 297.

''2 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p . 68.


II

Retallack's collection consists of 13 chapters (including his introduction andconclusion) and is rounded off by fairly detailed recommendations for furtherreading and an interesting chronology. Katharine Anne Lerman and MarkHewitson offer initial surveys of the Bismarck and Wilhelmine eras respective-ly, the former more conventional, the latter more revisionist in approach. Bothare exemplary in their clarity and even-handed to the point of being a tad tepid.Among the remaining thematic contributions those by Brett Fairbaim, on eco-nomic and social developments, and Christopher Clark, on religion and confes-sional conflict, stand out. Fairbaim makes an interesting argument that while"inequality and hierarchy" were obviously no Imperial German innovations;"what was new was the degree to which they were removed from the spatial,moral, and social context of traditional communities and defined instead in rela-tion to the market."^3 fjjs contribution gives a good sense of just how "grim andinsecure ... the lives of ordinary Germans" actually were, especially in thecities."*^

Clark does a superb job of illustrating how "religion became one of thestmcturing facts of German public life" in this period and explaining why, sincethe 1980s, it has become "one of the most vibrant growth areas in the historiog-raphy of Imperial Germany."^^ While he notes that confessionalism in this peri-od "extended beyond the domain of religious institutions and practices to therealm of everyday life," he cautions that there is also "a danger of pushing theargument too far" since "the harsh binary oppositions of culture-war rhetoricbelied a more complex reality of compromise, interdependence, and conver-gence.'"*^ He draws attention to the "paradoxical intertwining of secularizationand religious revival," emphasizing that "the two processes did not merely coex-ist" but were "dialectically interdependent" and "conditioned each other.'"*^

Retallack's contributors were not only called upon to strike a balancebetween modemity and authoritarianism. Retallack also stresses that they "do notprivilege the local and the regional at the expense of national and global con-texts."'*^ Readers tempted by the various local, regional, and global perspectivesthat currently feature so prominently in the historiography of Imperial Germany"to leave the nation behind," he wams, "do so at their peril."^^ On his under-standing, the various approaches refiected in the contributions facilitate a

''3 Brett Fairbaim, "Economic and social developments," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany,p. 63.

^ Ibid., p. 65.''5 Christopher Clark, "Religion and confessional conflict," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial

Germany, pp. 84, 85."Mbid., pp. 91,93."'Ibid., p. 102."•* Retallack, "Introduction," p. 7." ' Ibid., p. 8.


playing with scales ... akin to looking through a kaleidoscope:each slight twist reorients our understanding of German histo-ries in subtle ways, rearranging shards of historical evidenceand casting them in a new light. ... the point is not to suggestthat one measure or pattem reflects a tmer image than another,but rather that each one refracts a familiar picture of ImperialGermany in fresh and interesting ways.^*'

It will be interesting to see what students make of this attempt to offer them"a concise, readable, and authoritative point of entry" from a variety of perspec-tives. For the most part the concept seems to work well, although there is occa-sional potential for confusion. To find that the war enthusiasm of 1914 both "tookmost observers by surprise" and in fact never really existed may make some stu-dents wonder. 5' Likewise, Verhey argues that "no Germans actually starved todeath during the war" while Hewitson suggests that "severe malnutrition ... wasarguably responsible for 750,000 deaths."52 These need not be contradictorystatements, of course, but they confiase the issue. It is not so much the divergentviewpoints that are the problem at junctures like this but rather the fact that thenecessarily synthetic nature of these overviews leaves readers with the option totake or leave claims of this kind without being able to understand the source ofthe divergence. Overall, though, the volume does exactly what it says on thecover and indeed offers a useful first port of call for students interested inImperial Germany.

One item recommended emphatically for further reading by Retallack's col-lection as "an outstanding guide" is Jefferies's histodograpical survey.53 it comeswith an endorsement from Geoff Eley, who accurately describes it as "just thekind of critical introduction the bright and interested undergraduate needs." It islucid and engaging and at its best will give students a real sense both of howmuch fun historiography can be and why it matters. More advanced scholars maybe interested to see how Jefferies presents his material, but there is little of suf-ficient novelty or depth here to be of interest to them in its own right. Jefferies'sexposition of the debates is generally even-handed, and, like Retallack he main-tains that "transnational history is at its most convincing when it takes the nation-state seriously."^'' Occasional instances of self-indulgence are endearing in somecases and less so in others. The discussion of psychohistory, for instance, couldhave been rather shorter, but the ñin Jefferies had with it is palpable.^^ On the

50 Ibid.51 Hewitson, "Wilhelmine Germany," p. 55; Jeffrey Verhey, "War and revolution," in Retallack

(ed.). Imperial Germany, p . 244.52 Verhey, "War and revolution," p . 2 5 1 ; Hewitson, "Wilhelmine Germany," p. 55.53 Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, p . 277 .5'' Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p . 172.55 Ibid., pp. 79-83.


Other hand, I fail to see how dragging in the wretehed Carl Schmitt adds one iotato the substanee of the diseussion.^*

Jefferies's greatest problem arguably springs from the nature of the beastitself. A historiographieal survey whose author refuses to come off the feneewould obviously make for considerable tedium, yet, at the same time, the genreis essentially synthetic and when it comes to judgments that are not predominant-ly based on hermeneutical considerations, there is obviously a very real questionas to how the author of a historiographieal survey — not unlike the author of areview article! — can support those judgements. This is not a major problem, butat a few junctures the reader is rather left wondering how Jefferies has arrived atthe conclusions he presents or avows. All these are mere quibbles, though, andoverall this is a wide-ranging, eompetent, and well-presented introductory text-book that gives a good initial sense of "the remarkable pluralism that eurrentlyeharacterizes the historiography of Imperial Germany." '̂̂

While the contributions in the Wehler Festschrift are far from uncritical ofWehler's work, various underpinnings and implications of the Sonderweg con-cept doubtless receive a slightly more sympathetic hearing here than they do inthe previous two volumes. The eollection is sub-divided into four sections focus-ing on the empire's place in German history; the dynamies of society, politics,and culture in Imperial Germany; war and violence; and the global context. Mostof the twenty-eight contributions offer thought-provoking insights into the cur-rent state of debate, and, taken together, they do so from an unusually broadrange of perspectives.

Ute Planert's eomparative diseussion of anti-feminism in Germany, Britain,and Franee on the eve of the First World War is predicated on the assumption thatthe stronger the anti-feminist movement in any given country, the stronger thefeminist movement must have been. Consequently, "the existence of anti-femi-nist movements ... demonstrates not the baekwardness of a society but rather itsaptitude for reform."58 This is an interesting but surely not unproblematic sug-gestion. By the same logic, strong antisemitism would invariably be an indicatorof genuine Jewish power and/or widespread support for the eause of emancipa-tion, and this is obviously not a tenable suggestion. Planert is altogether moreconvincing when she argues that the mere presence of anti-feminist rhetoric inand of itself tells us precious little without a ñiller understanding of its socialbase. Her survey portrays anti-feminism as eoming predominantly from above inBritain, from the eentre in France, and from the right in Germany, hence also theclose association of anti-feminism with ideological antisemitism in ImperialGermany.

Olaf Blasehke's thought-provoking eontribution questions the inereasinglyfashionable use of the term "culture wars" for a broad range of contestations

56 Ibid., p. 94.57 Ibid., p. 3.58 (jte Planert, "Wir reformfáhig war das Kaiserreich? Ein westeuropäischer Vergleich," in

Müller and Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 183.


regarding the status of (especially Catholic) religion in late nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century Europe. Blaschke proposes instead to make more of the notionof an underlying second confessional age that underpins most of the confiictssubsumed under the "culture wars" concept but is itself a far more comprehen-sive and open-ended phenomenon and "mns alongside the eras of secularizationand nationalism without claiming primacy as the key determinant of the age."^^Blaschke demonstrates with a number of fascinating case studies that the senseof a steady decline in church affiliation that arises from a straight comparison ofdata from the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries needs to be fundamen-tally revised when the entire period between ca. 1830 and 1970 is taken intoaccount. What emerges instead is a steady rise in church affiliation that peaks inthe mid-twentieth century before rapidly falling off from the 1960s onwards.

Stephan Malinowski's discussion of the nobility, or rather the nobilities, inImperial Germany presents the class as predominantly "a driven rather than adriving force" in whose midst antisemitism was rampant.^'' While his highly dif-ferentiated "bottom-up history of the nobility" makes for a very different picturethan that propagated by "late Marxism and early Bielefeldism" it certainly doesnot detract from the fact that the nobility's role overall was "fatal and destmc-tive."6'

Thomas Mergel's contribution on migration, both intemal and extemal,offers an exemplary combination of survey and interpretation, clearly demon-strating the "normality" of migration in Imperial Germany. His discussion of thetruly staggering scale of intemal migration and fiuctuation and the extent towhich the divide between urban and mral settlement remained porous isextremely interesting. Not least, this state of fiux led to widespread disenfran-chisement since the franchise tended to be dependent on a year's residence in anygiven location. Many readers may be startled to read that by 1914 Germany hadin fact become the second largest importer of labour after the United States. Atthe same time, Mergel cautions against an overly optimistic evaluation of theempire's multicultural credentials, since the manifold forms of confrontationwith various "others" all too frequently mobilized resistance and völkisch aggres-sion.

Jörg Echtemkamp contributes a thoughtful meditation on the usefulness ofbracketing the period between 1914 and 1945 as a second Thirty Years' War, aconcept dear to Wehler's heart. For Echtemkamp a number of implications ren-der this periodization problematic. It detracts from important connectionsbetween the long nineteenth and short twentieth centuries, makes a comparativeperspective on the two post-war periods difficult, and risks over-emphasizingsimilarities between the two wars (for example, as "total wars"). Yet above all

5' Olaf Blaschke, "Das Deutsche Kaiserreich im Zeitalter der Kulturkämpfe," in Müller andTorp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 195.

*o Stephan Malinowski, "Ihr liebster Feind. Die deutsche Sozialgeschichte und der preußischeAdel," in Müller and Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, p. 207.

«'Ibid., pp. 216-218.


else, it is the radical mpture of the Shoah that establishes a fundamental discon-tinuity between the two wars and thus renders an overarching periodizationstressing the continuity between the two problematic.^^

Ill

One striking feature that these three volumes on Imperial Germany have in com-mon, and that may well be a reflection of the extent to whieh the historiographyof Imperial Germany for the most part continues to approach the vexed issue ofcontinuities and discontinuities from the perspective of 1933 rather than 1941, isthe relative marginality of both Jews and antisemitism. It may be worth empha-sizing that this makes not for one but for two absent stories, since "the Jews" asthey existed in the minds of the antisémites, and indeed of many in ImperialGermany who would not have dreamt of considering themselves antisemitic,generally had precious little in common with the Jews actually living in ImperialGermany.

In Jefferies's case the problem is compounded by the fact that on the fewoccasions that he does touch on either topic he seems lacking in sureness oftouch. Social Democrats, "like practicing Jews," we are told, were "effectively"exeluded from professorial chairs.^^ While it was doubtless extraordinarily diffi-cult, though not impossible, for members of the Jewish community to becomeregular professors, the cmcial issue was their affiliation with the community;whether they were "practicing" Jews was neither here nor there. The matterwould have merited closer inspection because the chances for Jews who had notleft the Jewish community to obtain chairs at German universities were closelytied to what has traditionally been interpreted as the rise and fall of liberalism inImperial Germany; this, too, a notion that has beeome profoundly unfashionable.Jews began to obtain chairs at first-rate German universities in the 1870s, mostfamously the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen in Marburg.Subsequently, it became virtually impossible for Jews to be appointed to chairsin the arts, humanities, and social sciences, but the share of Jewish professors ini-tially eontinued to rise all the same, due to the rapid expansion of the exact andnatural sciences, only to decrease markedly from the 1890s onwards.^

The women's movement in Imperial Germany, Jefferies explains, was"divided into bourgeois, socialist, and Jewish factions."^^ He then goes on toclarify that even though the Jewish Women's Association was a member of the

*2 Jörg Echtemkamp, "1914-1945; Ein zweiter Dreißigjähriger Krieg? Vom Nutzen undNachteil eines Deutungsmodells der Zeitgeschichte," in Müller and Torp (eds.). Das DeutscheKaiserreich, p. 279.

*3 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 11.^ The share of regular chairs held by Jews went from 2.8% in 1889 to 1.2% in 1917. Cf Peter

Pulzer, "Rechtliche Gleichstellung und öffentliches Leben," in Steven M. Lowenstein et al., Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, vol. 3 (Frankftirt/Main, 1997), pp. 155-57.

*5 Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, p. 148.


bourgeois umbrella organization of Imperial German women's organizations, it"generally pursued specifically Jewish aims."^^ What, one wonders, were these"specifically Jewish aims," how did they render Jewish bourgeois women non-bourgeois, and where does all this leave Jewish women in the bourgeois andsocialist women's movements?

Or take, as a final case in point, Jefferies's introduction of Nonn's andWalser Smith's work on the ritual murder accusation that took place in Konitz. Itfeatures not in the context of a discussion of antisemitism in Imperial Germany,but as an example for the merits of Alltagsgeschichte (the history of everydaylife) and microhistory. Jefferies refers to the goings-on in Konitz as a "hithertoobscure" event, which seems an odd characterization.67 To be sure. Norm andWalser Smith have done a great job of presenting the details of the case andopening it up for a broader scholarly audience, but neither for contemporaries norfor scholars with more than a fleeting interest in German-Jewish history has thisever been an "obscure" case — if by obscure Jefferies means little known ratherthan bizarre.

All this presumably comes down to clumsiness more than anything else.Indeed, Jefferies goes on to explain that both Nonn and Walser Smith approachedthe Konitz case as "an opportunity to explore much larger questions about therelationship between Protestants, Catholic, and Jews in Wilhelmine Germany."68Similariy, he suggests elsewhere that "arguably the most important works"focusing on religion in Imperial Germany "are those that address confessionalinteraction, and in particular the three-way relationship between Protestants,Catholics, and Jews," but this is certainly not a perspective that has in any wayhelped shape Jefferies's book as a whole.^^

Retallack's collection presents us with a similar picture. Lerman refers to "agrowing climate of racism, xenophobia, and intolerance in the 1880s" yet makesno mention of antisemitism in this context and it is not until page 80 that anti-semitism is first mentioned even in passing.''^ The volume includes a twelve-page chronology that includes four entries pertaining to Jews (the same numberas there are references to individual plays and operas) and ten entries pertainingto antisemitism. Taken together, Jews and antisemitism thus receive the sameamount of attention as do individual literary texts and artworks. Perhaps moststartlingly of all, Jeffrey Verhey's contribution on war and revolution does noteven mention the Judenzählung, the infamous Pmssian census designed to showthat Jews were supposedly shirking their military duties. There are exceptions, tobe sure: Celia Applegate mentions an instance in which Max Liebermann paint-ed an "almost stereotypically Jewish-looking Jesus," precipitating a "storm of

66 Ibid., «90.6 ' Ibid., 140.68 Ibid.69 Ibid., p. 161.™ Katharine Anne Lerman, "Bismarckian Germany," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, p .

38; Fairbaim, "Economic and social developments," p. 80.


criticism" that "became explicitly antisemitic and hysterically defensive ofChristian Germany"; and Angelika Schaser dedicates half a paragraph to theJewish Woman's Association.^'

Yet all in all the Jews have essentially been banished to the religion sectionand this although Christopher Clark himself points out that "in several respects,of course, the Jews were quite unlike either of the two mainstream Christiangroups.'̂ 2 Xhe "Jewish Question," he explains, "which produced a flood of pam-phlets, books, newspaper articles, and political speeches from the 1870sonwards, had no direct parallel in the historical experience of the other minori-ties. No other minorify faced a concerted campaign of vilification to comparewith the assault mounted by the political antisémites against the German

I have few quibbles with Clark's presentation, which is competent and up-to-date. He emphasizes that the "mpture" and "continuity" theses, as he callsthem — in other words emphasis on the modemify of political antisemitism as itemerged in the last three decades of the nineteenth centtiry on the one hand, andthe long-term continuify of (in large part religiously motivated) anti-Judaisni onthe other, "should be seen as complementary rather than contradictory."^'* As hepoints out, conservative antisémites "blended traditional, modem anti-capitalistand racist arguments in promiscuous fashion." Indeed, "it is remarkable howubiquitous this circular interweaving of religious, 'socio-ethical,' economic, andethnic themes was in the various discourses of German antisemitism."Consequently, "Christian publicists could expound antisemitic views while at thesame time claiming on theological grounds to reject the doctrine of race."^^

Clark makes some suggestive remarks about the "need to move beyond abinary model" that pre-assumes a straightforward "bipolar relationship betweena monolithic Jewish minority and a monolithic 'Christian' bloc."^^ ImperialGermany, after all, was a "tri-confessional system."''^ Yet one would be hard-pressed to get any sense of this "tri-confessional" nature of Imperial Germanyanywhere else in the volume.

Given Wehler's own minimal interest in antisemitism and Jews, it may comeas no surprise that these are hardly prominent themes in the Festschrift either.Here too there are exceptions, such as Volkov's contribution and Malinowski'salready mentioned piece on the nobilify. Sebastian Conrad, drawing on HeinzGollwitzer's earlier research, hints at interesting connections between anti-Chinese rhetoric in the US and antisemitic rhetoric in Imperial Germany, not

" Celia Applegate, "Culture and the art," in Retallack (ed.), lmperia¡ Germany, p. 123;Angelika Schaser, "Gendered Germany," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, p. 143.

2̂ Clark, "Religion and confessional conflict," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, pp. 95-101.

73 Ibid., and p. 97.7" Ibid., pp. 97-98.'5 Ibid., p. 98.'«Ibid., pp. 99, 101."Ibid., p. 101.

NINETEENTH- AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMAN HISTORY ' 581

because he is interested in the latter as sueh but because he considers this yetanother opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of conceiving of anything andeverything in a transnational eontext.'* This suggests an interesting perspeetive,but he is surely going over the top with his elaim that anti-Chinese rhetorieformed the "preferred" souree for the antisemitic critique of Jewish immigrationfi"om Eastem Europe.'^

The contribution in the Festschrift that arguably comes closest to treatingantisemitism and non-Jewish attitudes towards "the Jews" as integral to the ñinc-tioning of Imperial German society is Dieter Gosewinkel's discussion of citizen-ship legislation. On his account, it would be no exaggeration to identify antise-mitic sentiment as the begetter of the Pmssian naturalization statistic and to callit "a specifically anti-Jewish citizenship policy" that allowed denominational,antisemitic, and nationalist modes of exelusionism to merge and foeus speeifieal-ly on immigrants from Eastem Europe, among whom there was a signifieant pro-portion of Jews.^''

Going by these three volumes one gains the elear impression that main-stream historians of Imperial Germany and historians of Imperial German Jewryand Jewish/non-Jewish relations inhabit distinet universes. Neither of these threevolumes gives the slightest inkling of the richness and diversity of recentreseareh on German-Jewish history and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in theGerman eontext, a field now so well established that even experts are finding itinereasingly difficult to keep up; a field in which the interpretation of continu-ities and diseontinuities in modem German history is, if anything, even morecontested than it has been among modem German historians more generally; anda field that is characterized by a high level of conceptual sophistieation and fine-ly attuned to trends in the wider historiography of modem Germany in a way thatmost mainstream historians of Germany evidently are not to the historiographyof German Jewry and Jewish/non-Je wish relations. These three volumes, for alltheir strengths in other respects, would emphatically suggest that historians ofGerman Jewry need to think again if they are under any illusion that more thana handflil of colleagues outside their own specialism have seriously taken onboard how significant Jewish/non-Jewish relations are for the understanding ofsociety at large.

IV

Helmut Walser Smith's eontribution to the Wehler Festschrift, it tums out, wasoriginally going to be part of The Continuities of German History. Responding

'8 Sebastian Conrad, "Globalisierungseffekte: Mobilität und Nation im Kaiserreieh," in Müllerand Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, pp. 415-16. Cf. also Sebastian Conrad, "TransnationalGermany," in Retallack (ed.). Imperial Germany, p. 230.

7' Conrad, "Globalisiemngseffekte," p. 416.8" Dieter Gosewinkel, "Die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit im Deutschen

Kaiserreich," in Müller and Torp (eds.). Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, pp. 398-99.


to a review forum organized by sehepunkte, he explained that, "from the stand-point of intentions", the starting point for the book had been "the critique of thecriticism of the Sonderweg."^^ Indeed, "the title of the book ... is meant to shad-ow [Blackboum and Eley's] The Peculiarities of German History ... I did how-ever," he then added, "take the polemical chapter out of my book, and publishedit instead" in the Wehler Festschrift. "In Continuities," he went on to explain, "Iwas not writing a general history of Germany, but a history of nationalism, reli-gious violence, and racism, and making an argument for their causal force withrespect to the Holocaust." Antisemitism (if not the Jews) certainly featuresprominently here, and Walser Smith is adamant that antisemitism, as he aptlyputs it, "has long been precise mercury measuring the rise and demise of humaneattitudes towards others."^2

To avoid any misunderstanding, and the possibility of Walser Smith beingpunished for sins that are mine and not his, it is worth clarifying that his empha-sis on the "vanishing point" of 1941 is not primarily normative in nature. This isevident not least from his statements that "perspective generates as well as lim-its knowledge" and that "a characteristic of the vanishing point is that it power-fully stmctures the visual field, even to the point of distortion."^^ It is difficult toenvisage Adomo making similar statements about the new categorical imperativehe saw resulting from Auschwitz; rather, the whole point of Adomo's argumentwas surely that we have no choice in the matter. Limitations or distortions thatmay result from adherence to this categorical imperative only underscore themeasure of irrevocable destmction wrought by Auschwitz. These limitations anddistortions, after all, are the products not of the categorical imperative but of thebarbarism that necessitated it.

In his response to the sehepunkte review fomm, Walser Smith explicitly con-firmed his position. "I would note here," he clarified, "that I had originallyintended the vanishing point to be a descriptive metaphor, describing a certainpull, and not necessarily a normative metaphor. That almost all readers andreviewers have taken it to be also normative suggests that the problem lies in myown narrative. As a historian, and as an evaluator of other historical work, I trynot to take this normative view. But I can see where the book pulls in a differentdirection." Note, though, the hint at some measure of ambivalence suggested bythe wording ("I had originally intended...").

Walser Smith's discussion of nationalism seeks to identify a novel perspec-tive cutting across the divide between perennialists and modemists. He emphat-ically takes issue with the constmctivist position of Gellner and others. "Far from

*' Helmut Walser Smith, "Kommentar," sehepunkte, 9 (2009), c f http;//www.sehepunkte.de/2009/03/kommentar/helmut-walser-smith-ueber-mehrfachbesprechung-helmut-walser-smith-the-continuities-of-gennan-history-in-ausgabe-9-2009-nr-1 -47/

82 Walser Smith, Continuities, p . 192.83 Ibid., pp. 14, 22.


making nations, or inventing them," he concludes, "modem nationalism depart-ed from earlier senses of nations: as nations among other nations."^'* He identi-fies a cmcial "epistemic shift, from ... mimesis to expression, outer to inner" thatdid not faeilitate the invention of the nation but rather plaeed the already exist-ing nation "on an altogether different epistemological ground."^^ por WalserSmith it is above all Fichte who is "the starting point ofthe new nationalism, notbecause of the oft-quoted, but seldom read Addresses to the German Nation, atthe time hardly heard by anyone, but because he put the nation onto an altogethernew philosophieal ground — beyond the senses."^^ "Nations existed prior to theeighteenth century, and language was one of a number of markers of them,"Walser Smith insists, but "prior to the epistemic shift ... language could not, inthe way that the German nationalists imagined, constitute nations as such."^^ Heis so adamant about this because, as he sees it, "to continue to insist that nationsare imagined not sensed, posited not given, invented not found, is to remainenmeshed in epistemological coordinates first mapped out by Fichte. More pro-saically, it means that modem nationalism still determines our sense ofnations."^^

Thought-provoking as Walser Smith's argument is, I do wonder whether itdoes not in the end amount to something of a zero-sum game. Most modemistswould acknowledge a measure of continuity between what has come to bedefined as nationalism, nations, and/or nation states and various pre-existingphenomena and entities. For them, the cmcial distinction is that for all the simi-larities, parallels, and analogies that may exist, the conceptual and interpretativeframework of nationalism lent these phenomena and entities a distinct newmeaning and with it a distinet new dynamics and mode of functioning. In short,historical entities that may well in many respects look like nations in the modemsense would not have been understood as such or functioned in the same way atthe time. If I understand it correctly, Walser Smith would agree this far. Yet wheremost modemists conclude that if the phenomena differ one should not call themby the same name, Walser Smith's suggestion seems to be that one should callthem by the same name while not forgetting to emphasize how different they are.Presumably this strategy is bom of a desire to salvage an altemative, less harm-ful concept of nationhood (rather than formulate a radical critique of nationalismas the distinct — and distinctly modem — scourge on humankind that it is).

The following ehapter offers an intriguing discussion of the nexus between"catastrophic religious violence and national belonging." Walser Smith focuseson the very different ways in which the horrors ofthe Thirty Years' War on theone hand, and violence against Jews on the other, featured in the public imagina-tion. While "a kind of forgetfulness descended over the cataclysmic violence that

8" Ibid., p. 73.85 Ibid., p. 58.8« Ibid., p. 59.8' Ibid., p. 58.,88 Ibid., p. 73.


attended the war" and "German Christians rehearsed reconciliation, and con-curred in their forgetting of the ravages of the Thirty Years War," their attitudesto the anti-Jewish violence of the past were entirely different.^9 fjerg "tjie eventsthat initiated violence, or justified it, became part of a material culture thatmarked and celebrated the exclusion of Jews.''^^ On the one hand, he suggests,

there was forgetting with recognition of the other. This was thecentral story of the memory of the Thirty Years War in theearly modem period. On the other side was memory twinedwith disavowal of the other's full humanity — as in Christianviolence against Jews.... One story tells of violence as scourgeand the peace as delivery from it. The other tells of violence asa just act, which can be rehearsed again. In one story, Germanstilled markers recalling catastrophic violence; in the other, theyerected them in stone.

Consequently, in the long mn "the legacy of catastrophic religious violenceenabled Christians throughout the German lands ... to imagine community, evena national community, with other Christians, but not with Jews."9i

Walser Smith then makes a "preliminary attempt" to offer a comprehensivesketch of anti-Jewish violence in Europe "across the long nineteenth century"focusing on "the significance and meaning, in an anthropological sense, of vio-lent acts and words" rather than possible causes of the violence.^^ He discemsthree major shifts: firstly, a "transition from community-based violence to vio-lence defined in national terms" that culminated "in the accusation that Jewswere traitors to the nation"; secondly, a "transition from the threat of murder toactual murder"; and thirdly, a change in the role of the state.^^ While the state tra-ditionally played a cmcial role in containing anti-Jewish violence states nowrepeatedly either "proved unable to exert that control," with the result that "vio-lence of apocalyptic dimension followed," or, and this was "a still more decisivestep," in some cases states "exploited anti-Jewish violence for their own end." '̂*Interestingly, Walser Smith has since stated that "if I were to write the bookagain, I think I would add a chapter on the state," not least because "a longer,more sustained discussion of the state would be required ... to explain 'WhyGermany? "'^5 ^he subsequent chapter on eliminationist racism explores a num-ber of "fateful imbrications: modem anti-Semitism with racism, racism with

89 Ibid., pp. 87, 95.90 Ibid., pp. 76-77.91 Ibid., p . 101.92 Ibid., pp. 115. 116.93 Ibid., pp. 8, 117.91 Ibid.95 Walser Smith, "Kommentar."


elimination, and anti-Semitism with the kind of racism that imagined that peo-ples could be eliminated. As if braids stretched and then tied, these histories ranparallel before being twisted together."96

Walser Smith's focus is on long-term continuities "both within Germany his-tory and across it," and he stresses that "continuify need not imply particularify"— indeed, on his own account, "precisely the triost important continuities ... arenot peculiar to Germany."97 Consequently, as he himself concedes, his sugges-tions thus far "do not... answer the question: why Germany?"^^ It in any caselies in the nature of the unprecedented descent into barbarism that the Shoah rep-resents that "here there was not continuify."99 The continuify, he concludes, lies"not in genocide, but in the imagination of expulsion, in the severing of ties toothers, and in the violent ideologies, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism, thatmade these things possible to think, support, and enact."'00

Doubtless much of what Walser Smith has tentatively suggested in TheContinuities of German History will require more nuance when investigated ineamest, but as an impassioned plea to frame the question of how the Shoah couldoccur much more broadly than most historians are currenfly inclined to contem-plate, this is an enormously stimulating book bursting with tantalizing ideas,observations, references, and research questions. There are obvious weaknessesthat spring almost inevitably from the nature of the project. The primary focus ison intellectual history, and, as a book of some 230 pages that grapples with anumber of big themes and complex ideas from a variefy of perspectives, it can-not also take on the many questions his account obviously begs about the extentto which and the ways in which the ideas he reconstmcts resonated in, and helpedshape, wider sociefy. Clearly, although the book has plenfy of empirical observa-tions and telling detail to offer, Walser Smith has had to pay for breadth withdepth. The Continuities of German History is an opening and not a closing state-ment and as such it is bold and reñ-eshing, perceptive, compassionate, and unusu-ally judicious.

Weitz's history of Weimar Germany comes with ringing endorsements ñ-om anumber of historians of considerable standing, and there can indeed be no doubtthat Weitz's account is vivid and engaging. Yet along with its strengths come theweaknesses characteristic of any account that goes a long way towards givingreaders an ostensible sense of what it would have been like to be "there." This ismost evident in the second chapter, "Walking the Cify," in which Weitz invitesthe reader to waUc (or travel) along various routes through Berlin. Perhaps

96 Walser Smith, Continuities, p. 192.' 'Ibid., pp. 10-11.'»Ibid., p. 217.99 Ibid., p. 232.'»0 Ibid., p. 233.


inevitably, the temptation, and indeed the need, to enrich the narrative with awide range of additional information simply does not square with the pseudo-naturalistic pretenee of the walk.

The problem is perhaps epitomized by the following fallacy. Weitz and hisreaders are accompanied on their walk, inter alia, by the writer and flâneur FranzHessel. On one oecasion, Weitz quotes an illustrative passage from one ofHessel's published texts, telling us that this is something that Hessel "remarked... as he was ambling through Berlin's elegant shopping district."101 Similarly,having given us an impression of "the heavily Jewish Scheunenviertel," interalia, with the help of reports that Joseph Roth published in 1920 and 1921, weare subsequently invited to walk off with a bank clerk who takes us home to asuburban settlement built between 1926 and 1930."'2 For the aecumulation of adiverse range of perspeetives on Weimar Berlin all this is, of eourse, absolutelyfine; compatible with the pretence that we are literally taking a walk throughBerlin it obviously is not.

Ineidentally, Weitz assumes that "the heavily Jewish Seheunenviertel" ineor-porates the entire Spandauer Vorstadt and elaims that the New Synagogue onOranienburger Straße was "the center of Seheunenviertel."'"^ Yet the nameSeheunenviertel historically referred to a much smaller area that eertainly did notinelude Oranienburger Straße, and it was, ironically, the Nazis who initiated thepractice of referring to the entire Spandauer Vorstadt as the Seheunenviertel.They did so in order to transfer the stigma of an area assoeiated with EastEuropean refugees, overcrowding, and squalor to the aeculturated Jews livingadjaeent to it. Whether one should maintain or try to abandon the now wide-spread habit of referring to the entire Spandauer Vorstadt as the Seheunenviertelmay be another matter, but Weitz's usage of the term is surely an anaehronismthat at the very least militates yet further against the pretence that we are havinga real-time walk through Weimar Berlin. It is worth adding that in Weitz's book,a handful of the usual iconic individuals apart, the Jews mostly remain confinedto their reservation, in this ease "the heavily Jewish Seheunenviertel," and are ofvirtually no relevance to the bigger picture.

I also found Weitz's unmediated use of literary material as empirical evi-dence a little troubling. "What did returning soldiers do when they got home" atthe end of the First World War, Weitz asks, answering this question by citingaccounts from two novels, one published in 1928, the other written in the1930s.'*''* I do not doubt for a moment that these novels have something inter-esting and relevant to tell us about the immediate postwar reality, but it is surelypostwar reality as refraeted through a decade's worth of discourse on this reali-ty, and highly emotive diseourse at that, that we find reflected in these texts.

101 Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany. Promise and Tragedy (Princeton and Oxford, 2007) , p. 4 3 .102 Ibid., p . 57.103 Ibid., p. 59.10̂ Ibid., pp. 22-23. The latter is also deployed in the same unmediated way to tell us what

women's work in munitions factories during the war was like (ibid., p. 10).


Similarly, the fictional landlady of the character called Isherwood in the novelGoodbye to Berlin has become the actual landlady of the actual ChristopherIsherwood. However fluid the boundaries between fiction and autobiographymay be in this case, this transformation would surely have merited some sort ofcomment.

As Weitz states squarely at the outset, he has "chosen not to engage" theextant historiography, "but [I] have included a bibliographic essay after thenotes."'05 Clearly, then, his aim is not to make transparent the vagaries involvedin trying to reconstmct the story but rather to tell the story in as graphic andengrossing a way as possible, to tell the whole story as far as possible, and to tellthe whole story as though he is telling it for the first time. All in all, Weitz per-forms the task he has set himself well. Still, he is clearly much stronger on theculture than the straight politics, his source base is somewhat uneven and hisreliance on basic reference literature is occasionally a tad heavy.

His basic historiographical commitments for the most part seem obviousenough. He insists that the Weimar Republic was not doomed from the outset,that it was only ever seriously threatened from the radical right but not the radi-cal left, and that the National Socialist ascendancy was not inevitable, not evenohce the demise of the republic became increasingly likely. On the issue of con-tinuities and discontinuities he seems somewhat tom. He suggests that an"uneasy mix of modemity and tradition ... contributed to Weimar's particularintensity" and unreservedly acknowledges popular mobilizations as "democracyin action, even when the specific goals of various pressure groups were pro-foundly antidemocratic."'06 His account of the political right's forays into masspolitics would suggest that this was a major shift taking place on a significantscale for the first time in the Weimar era, not the 1890s (as is usuallyassumed).'O'' Yet he also suggests that "Weimar politics had profound links tothe past," speaks of "deeply etched lines of continuity with the German past,"and refers to "the long-standing 'democratic deficit' in Germany, the persistenceof authoritarian stmctures and mentalities going back to the founding of the statein 1871."'08 Presumably one should not read too much into all this. PerhapsWeitz is especially interested in the dialectics of continuity and discontinuity;perhaps, having excluded the historiography from his explicit concems, he hasoperated without genuinely making up his mind on these matters. What makesthe latter seem more likely is the fact that Weitz's most frequently pronouncedassessment amounts to the vaguely plausible-sounding but not overly meaning-ful claim that Weimar was for the most part just like any other place, just more(intensely) so.

H'5lbid., p. 360, nl.•0« Ibid., pp. 105, 106.'07 Ibid., p. 125.108 Ibid., pp. 127,358.


These various concems notwithstanding, there is much that is engaging andlikeable in Weitz's book. Yet even at its best, readers can really only take or leaveWeitz's account. It is constmcted in a way that rarely lends itself to scmtiny. Thismay not be immediately obvious to scholars in the field who are sufficientlyversed to provide the historiographieal contextualization themselves withoutneeding Weitz to spell it out for them (hence perhaps the ringing endorsements).Yet while Weitz's mode of presentation may be fine for a general readership itseems altogether more problematic when it comes to students. Undergraduatesare likely to find Weitz's book a smashing read. Beeause it forces them to con-sume its wealth of vivid images without really being able to tap into the reflec-tion on Weitz's part that has gone into the creation of these images, the book willimplant them firmly in the imagination of at least one generation of students —and the rest of us will then have a very hard time even getting students to under-stand why Weitz's portrayal is accurate when it is, let alone deconstmcting itwhen it is not.

Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge

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